“I’ll pay good money for him,” said Nuri calmly. “I know people who will pay us if we give him to them alive.”

“I kill him.”

“He’s worth more to me. To us. More alive.”

“Why would you save a murderer?”

The Mercedes rounded the corner, Gerard’s men hanging out the windows. Nuri went over to help the last of the wounded get in. Gerard stopped him as he bent to an old man.

“He’s not hurt,” said Gerard gruffly.

“He’s holding his side.” The man wasn’t bleeding but seemed in obvious pain. “We have to get him in the car and take them to your clinic.”

“No, they will find their own way,” said Gerard. “You must take me to my house in the hills.”

“I have other places to go.”

“Take me,” demanded Gerard.

The bodyguards bristled.

“What about the wounded?” asked Nuri.

“If you are my friend,” said Gerard, “you will help me, not them.”

“Get in the car,” said Nuri, deciding it was the wisest thing to do.

Chapter 27

Duka

It had gone to hell so quickly that Kimko couldn’t process all that had happened. But the basics were clear enough: Girma had shot up the center of town, killing or wounding at least a half-dozen people, all allied with Meur-tse Meur-tskk. There was certain to be a lot more fighting.

Kimko might have viewed the conflict as good for business if he hadn’t been mixed up in the middle of it.

His best plan, he thought, was to get away as quickly as possible. But Girma didn’t look ready to let him leave.

“You will see our great victory,” Girma told him as the Range Rover sped across the desert to the foothills where Sudan the Almighty First Liberation had a fortress. “We will crush our enemies.”

“You will need more ammunition. I can fetch it.”

“We are fine. After the battle.”

“Not before? Are you sure?”

“You will admire our mortars in action.”

“What are you going to do with mortars?”

“We will fight. We will destroy our enemy.”

“You can’t attack them in the city.”

“Don’t tell me how to fight!” screamed Girma. He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out more khat leaves, thrusting them into his mouth.

Li Han studied the laptop screen, looking at the coding he had retrieved from the UAV’s brain. With the proper connection—and power from the batteries—getting in was easy.

Relatively.

The control interface was written in a variation C++. If he’d been back in his lab in Shanghai, accessing the underlying code would be trivial; he’d have any number of tools and a large number of computers to help him. But here, all he had was a laptop with less memory than the UAV’s brain.

The interface was designed to be easily accessed. Li Han managed to get a full dump of the program despite the fact that he couldn’t get past the encrypted password, preventing access to the interface itself. He could see the logic of how it worked, though he couldn’t yet access the commands. Until he managed that, he wouldn’t be able to fully understand what he was looking at.

He might be able to replace the encrypted code section with his own revision, recompile and run the program. The problem was, he didn’t have the tools. His Toshiba laptop, upgraded with the latest processor and a trunkload of memory, was state of the art and could easily run a suite of debuggers and other tools. But he didn’t have them.

He could get the tools from any number of places online—Shanghai University would be his top choice, as he had a full set of broken passwords and knew the system intimately. But he assumed the Americans were tracking his satellite phone, so tethering the laptop to it would be as good as telling them where he was.

He noticed Amara staring at him.

“You’re interested in what I’m doing?” asked Li Han, amused.

Amara shrugged.

“Do you know how to work these?” Li Han pointed at the laptop.

“I can work a computer.”

At best, you can handle e-mail and Web surfing, thought Li Han. But the boy had potential. He could be trained.

At least to a degree.

“The UAV has a brain. I’m trying to tap into it,” said Li Han. “The program is written in a fairly common language. I think that’s only the interface. They encrypted part of the underlying assembly language, but it uses this chip.” He pointed at the encryption circuitry on the circuit board. “See, they were worried about someone breaking through the transmission, not physical security. So I can use what I know about the chip myself. I emulate it. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”

“Your program breaks the code.”

“Something like that,” said Li Han. Amara had missed a few steps, but that was the gist. “I need an Internet connection. I need to access some documents. Technical documents—I don’t remember how some of these things work.”

Lying slightly made the explanation simple.

“I don’t know if there are Internets here,” said Amara.

“If I had a sat phone, I could make my own connection,” said Li Han. “But it would have to be one that the Americans couldn’t trace to me. Or to you. You know how they are watching.”

There was a commotion upstairs. One of the brothers called down to Amara and told him that a small boy had run up to the house and was knocking furiously on the door.

Li Han went upstairs. When they let the boy in, he collapsed just across the threshold, tears streaming from his face as he unleashed a long paragraph of words.

“There has been fighting,” explained Amara. “The two groups.”

“That’s inconvenient.”

“People have been killed,” said Amara. “We should be ready to leave.”

“Where do you suggest we go?”

Amara didn’t answer.

“We stay here for now,” answered Li Han. “Ask the boy if he knows what a satellite phone is. Tell him I’ll pay for one—twice as much as I did for the wire.”

Chapter 28

Washington, D.C.

Dan Todd thrust a glass into Jonathon Reid’s hand as soon as Reid walked into his private den in the White House residence.

“Taste it,” demanded Todd.

“What is it?”

“Bourbon. Taste it.”

Reid sniffed dubiously at the glass. The color was a very dark amber, and the liquid had the consistency of gear oil.

“What do you smell?” Todd asked.

“Cigarette smoke.”

“Ha!” Todd was a chain-smoker, and the room smelled of Marlboros. “Try it. It’s supposed to be a hundred and three years old.”

Reid took a very small sip from the glass.

“Well?” asked Todd.

“Hmmm,” said Reid.

“One hundred and three year old bourbon,” continued the President’s husband. “Allegedly.”

He laughed, then downed a shot.

“Smooth,” said Todd. “This is what you get when the governor of Kentucky is trying to curry favor with the President. Of course, what he doesn’t realize is that the President doesn’t like bourbon.”

“But her husband does.”

“True. But if there’s one person in the world who has no influence with the President, it’s her husband.” Todd took another sip. “Maybe it is a hundred years old. It’s certainly dark enough. But how would I really know?”

“You don’t,” said Reid.

“Absolutely—but then we take much on face value. So what do you need to see her about?”

“I’m sorry to use you like this.”

“Nonsense, Jonathon—you’re not sorry to use me at all.”